google drive stream files not working on my Mac

I have a 2023 MacBook Pro with M3 chip with a 512GB local storage and a 2TB google drive subscription. I was hoping that I could upload the 1.5TB of files that was on my old PC to the drive and stream the files on my Mac. The problem is that the streaming option is not working and is basically mirroring my files with having them both on my local drive and my cloud drive. I have tried for months to find a solution and hoped that the new macOS update will fix this but still the same issue. Should I just buy an external ssd or try something like dropbox or something? (':